The Dreamplains occupy the northwestern reaches of the Celedrim Plains, a vast expanse of frozen steppe notable for its strange atmosphere and the cluster of impact craters that scar its surface. The name comes from the unsettling quality of travel here. Distances seem wrong, the horizon plays tricks, and travelers report dreams of vivid intensity during any sleep taken on the plains.
Character
The Dreamplains are flatter and more featureless than the rest of the Celedrim Plains, which is saying something. The snow here has a peculiar blue-white quality, and sounds carry strangely. Sometimes voices from miles away arrive as whispers, while nearby speech vanishes into silence. The Neth who pass through this region say the boundary between the Material Plane and Celestia grows thin here, though not as dramatically as at Top of the World. The spirits of the dead sometimes wander the Dreamplains, visible as faint shapes at the edge of vision, before completing their journey to the other side.
Hills of the Lost
South of the craters, where the Dreamplains begin transitioning toward the Winterwood, a range of low hills breaks the flatness. The Hills of the Lost earned their name honestly. Travelers who enter them often emerge days later, miles from where they expected, with hazy memories of the intervening time.
The hills are not inherently malevolent, but something about their geography defies normal navigation. Compasses spin, the sun seems to move wrong, and familiar landmarks rearrange themselves. The Zwaeron have mapped safe paths through, but these paths change with the seasons, and even experienced guides sometimes lose their way.
Those who spend too long lost in the hills sometimes return... changed. Quieter. Seeing things others can't. The Neth call them "touched by the between" and treat them with a mixture of reverence and wariness.
Wolfspine
At the southern edge of the Dreamplains, the Wolfspine rises, a small mountain range that marks the boundary between the open steppe and the forested regions to the south. The peaks are jagged and bare, resembling (as the name suggests) the spine of some enormous creature. The Zwaeron use the Wolfspine as a landmark and waystation, and several semi-permanent camps exist in the sheltered valleys between peaks.
Dire wolves den in the Wolfspine in unusual numbers, which is why the Zwaeron favor it. This is where they find and bond with new companions when their current mounts die. The wolves here are larger and fiercer than those elsewhere, and some Zwaeron believe the strange energies of the Dreamplains have affected them over generations.